Nashville shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto will be released
Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale’s pre-killing spree manifesto is set to be released to the public after the FBI and its’ highly skilled team of criminal profilers analyze its contents, a Nashville Council Member revealed to The Post.
The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit is working “in tandem with” the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to complete “a very in-depth analysis of certain aspects of the shooter’s life,” Robert Swope said Wednesday.
“The manifesto is going to be released. It’s just a matter of when. There are some incredibly brilliant psychological minds and psychological analysts combing through her entire life,” added Swope, who is a member of the City Council’s Public Safety, Beer and Regulated Beverages Committee.
Transgender Hale, 28, left behind the manifesto as well as detailed maps of the school she methodically planned to attack, leaving three schoolchildren and three staff dead.
The shooter arrived at the Covenant School around 9:54 a.m. Monday, exterior surveillance images show. Hale sent several messages to a former classmate minutes later, and told the woman: “I’m planning to die today … You’ll probably hear about me on the news.”
Authorities have revealed the attack was pre-planned and targeted, and Hale had a further cache of weapons hidden throughout the brick-faced home she shared with her parents.
Police rushed to the scene, where Hale shot at them as they arrived, MNPD Chief John Drake told reports.
Hale’s parents claimed they thought she sold her legally bought firearms after they expressed their disapproval, police said, but instead, she used two assault rifles and a handgun to carry out her heinous suicide mission.
Hale was dead within 14 minutes of the alarm being raised, but not before killing 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, as well as school janitor Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and 60-year-old headmistress Katherine Koonce.
One of the children, Hallie, was the daughter of Covenant Church pastor Chad Scruggs.
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Koonce, an educator for over 23 years, joined the school as the headmistress in 2016. Koonce’s daughter, Anna, also worked at the school as a faculty and student assistant.
Police have not yet released information related to the motive, but said the school – not specific victims – was targeted.
Swope told the Post Hale had “looked at” two other schools, both of which were public, before deciding “the security was too great to do what she wanted to do.”
“So she chose a private Christian school, for, probably the reason is that the security is a whole lot less,” he went on.
The council member, who spoke to The Post while en route to a Wednesday evening vigil, said he and other Nashville officials were exploring ways to “harden our schools from ballistics, active AI systems that can recognize guns at a hundred yards outside under any circumstances.”
He lauded the work of the Metro Nashville Police Department and other first responders.
“I’m beyond heartbroken. That this kind of evil actually exists in this world, it is amazing to me,” Swope said. “I don’t know how our community gets past this.”
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